A Virus to Run Through an Army
by BitchPrincessOfPunkRock
Summary: Alone in a crowd, haunted amongst the stars, and Jack Harkness is not nearly drunk enough to blott out the memories when that nifty old watch of his that never beeps, does. And a distraction is a distraction, after all. Rated for language.
1. Chapter 1

**Part one; An Invitation**

_He was standing in a hallway._

_Alone, he thought distantly, always so very alone._

_It was dark. So very, very dark._

_Someone, somewhere, was screaming._

_It was a horrible, harrowing scream. Terror, panic._

_He was dizzy._

_The ground felt like it was moving beneath his feet._

_There were voices, echoing along the thin corridor, bouncing off the walls._

_He couldn't make out the words._

_Just disembodied voices calling out at him from nowhere._

_His head was hurting._

000

Jack jerked awake. He was still sitting at the same bar he had been in for the last eighteen hours. He sighed, rubbed his eyes. His head _was_ hurting. His heart was racing, and he felt like he had just fallen from a forty story building. Not the most pleasant of feelings, and it wasn't even a metaphor.

It was a hypnic jerk, he told himself. That's all. Just a random sleep phenomenon.

He felt an instant pang of something, dulled by the alcohol but still sharp enough to hurt - guilt maybe - and downed what was left of his drink.

Ianto had taught him the name for it. Felt like a lifetime ago, now, but he could hear an echo of Gwen's voice as she mocked the Welshman; _You're the first person I've met that wouldn't just call it 'that jerky sleep thing'._

He wasn't nearly drunk enough, he decided, and waved down the barmaid.

She was a pretty young thing; humanoid with pale skin that glowed ever so slightly in the harsh, luminous light of the club. She smiled a sultry smile at him, and blinked down at him with huge purple eyes.

' What'll it be, gorgeous?'

She leant against the chipped wooden bar, crossing her arms beneath her amble bosom and making sure her chest was at his eye-level. He didn't look at her.

' Whatever this piss-water was,' he waved his empty glass.

The girl was obviously hardened to the abuse of drunk and bitter customers, and barely shrugged before turning to the taps behind her.

' Pretty girls not your type?' a gruff voice off to the right asked.

Jack turned to face a huge, lime green face framed by tentacled hair. A species he wasn't familiar with, and he wasn't in the mood to take attitude.

' Why? You hitting on me?'

The creature scoffed, affronted, and grumbled in what sounded suspiciously like a west Yorkshire accent, ' No bloody chance, mate.'

' Oh, right,' Jack said grinning a huge, false grin. ' Twenty first century. Always forget. It's not just the Earthlings that're frigid, huh?'

He got a meaty, ham sized, seven fingered fist to the face for his trouble.

000

_He was standing in a hallway. Alone._

_It was dark. Someone was screaming._

_He was dizzy. The ground felt like it was moving beneath his feet._

_There were voices, echoing along the thin corridor, bouncing off the walls. He couldn't make out the words. Just disembodied voices calling out at him from nowhere._

_His head was hurting._

_The light flickered on, reflected around the room, blinding, then it was gone again._

_The ground was moving, he realised. He was on a ship, all metal and cold and clinical to the point of assaulting cleanliness._

_The light flickered again, a bit longer this time and his eyes had time to adjust. The walls were metal, but coloured. Lavender, peach and soft baby blue all vying for his attention._

_Then it was just the darkness again._

_He was on his knees, he realised, and stood up._

_The ship swayed, throwing him against the wall. It felt like metal - smooth and joined flawlessly by small, circular bolts at even intervals - but it wasn't cold._

_Light again, whiting out his vision for an instant and taking a lot longer to clear back into colour._

_There was a shape, now, dark and obscuring the pastel backdrop._

_It was a person._

_A figure._

_' Hypervodka?' it asked._

000

Jack groaned as he came to.

He was in the alley at what he assumed was the back of the bar. His nose ached, and he could taste blood on his tongue.

He hadn't died, he knew that. There weren't dreams when he was dead. There was just the darkness. That might have been preferable.

Jack was a man who didn't often sleep, and even less often dreamed. He didn't like it.

He dragged himself to his feet, and found he had to use the grotty wall for support.

His head was spinning, stomach churning. He couldn't recall the last time he had felt quite so bad. Then again, it had been a very long time since he had allowed himself a proper drink. Perhaps several hundred years of water had weakened his resistance to a nice stiff measure of a hard spirit.

He felt his eyes roll back into his head, and slumped back against the brick.

He felt the rough stone and the slimy damp of it through his shirt, and managed to think _few more minutes_ before he passed out.

000

_Hallway. Alone._

_Dark. Screaming._

_Dizzy. Ground moving._

_Voices, echoing. Corridor._

_Head hurting._

_Light flickered, reflected. Blinding, gone again._

_He was on a ship, all metal and cold._

_The light flickered again, a bit longer._

_Then it was just the darkness again._

_He was on his knees, and stood up._

_The ship swayed, throwing him against the wall._

_Light again, whiting out his vision. Cleared, there was a person._

_A figure._

_' Hypervodka?' it asked. It sounded very far away._

_He blinked, rubbed at his eyes. The brightness died down a bit more, the world focused again._

_The figure was nearer than he thought it had any right to be._

_It was a girl. Twelve? Maybe thirteen._

_She was wearing a dolly dress, bright and floral, fitted around the bust then dropping into a wide a-line skirt which fell to her mid-thigh. Her legs were covered in pristine white tights, making her skin look like porcelain._

_Dark hair fell to her shoulders, straight but tangled and knotted like she'd spend a day running around a garden._

_Her eyes were big and bright, liquid mercury and unnerving._

_He could hear crying. The girl was crying._

_No, wait, she was grinning. A beaming, pearly white grin._

_But someone was crying._

_His face felt wet._

_' I know what'll help,' she cooed, offering her hand._

_He took it, it was rough and callused. Not a little girl's hand. He tried to pull back, but she held on tight._

_' I can help,' she said, more quietly. ' I want to help.'_

_She fisted her hands in the fabric of her skirt, inching it up her legs._

_She licked her lips, full and red and enticing. Her bright metallic eyes were hooded, half closed in ecstasy._

_The tights were hold-ups, the cold antiseptic white melting into soft, warm pink just under the hem of the pretty dress. She ran a finger across the white, the pink and up to the softness above. She wasn't wearing panties._

_He wanted to pull back, knew he should, but he couldn't move._

_' I can help,' she repeated, huskily._

000

Another day, another bar.

Same situation.

Same seedy people, same slightly disconcerting smell. Same pretty barmaid with the same fake smile and the same resigned shrug when he turned her down for more of the same cheap, nasty alcohol.

His face was swollen, bruised. He pressed the side of the cool glass to his cheek, and relished in the sensation before downing the dregs of his whiskey.

It wasn't really whiskey, of course, but he didn't know the local name for it and the nearest reference point the had for the smoothness on the tongue and the burn down the throat was good old Earth whiskey.

The barmaid set down a refill for him without a word of request, and snatched away his empty glass.

Even in a bar full of all the unsavoury noises of revelling peoples, the silence of the exchange grated on him.

One thing Jack missed was company. Good company. Well, decent, at least.

He let his eyes drop to his wrist, fingers automatically stroking the leather of his vortex manipulator. It was worn, tatty; and just as old as he was.

It was also essentially useless. He didn't have anybody to contact anymore.

He'd spoken to Hart only once since the whole Grey debacle, during his time in Australia. He'd never been there before, and spent two months relishing in the lack of visual memories, ghosts. The alien clubs were always fairly easy to find, if you knew where to look, and, while he didn't stand out any less there than in a regular pub, they asked fewer questions.

He'd heard rumours of a small rift in Mexico, and a jackass of a man salvaging the scrap that fell through it. It wasn't hard to connect the dots, and find a phone number.

He had sent John his co-ordinates and a message reading only; _Drink, fight, fuck. That order._

It hadn't been a question, or even a request, and he had expected a quick and enthusiastic response. All he got was a no-nonsense; _I'm nobodies rebound._

Jack had gone to bed desolate and alone, and sobbing like a child, and when he woke it was with a fresh resolution to get off of the insignificant, ghost ridden rock that was Sol 3.

000

_' I can help,' she repeated, huskily._

_He closed his eyes, tried to think of as many reasons not to let her as he could._

She's a little girl. She's a little girl.

_Except, when he opened them, she wasn't a little girl anymore._

_She was a grown woman, in the same dress._

_Tights laddered, scuffed and dirty; make-up streaked and smudged across her suddenly older face; her hand stroking her accentuated breasts._

000

Hypnic jerk.

Again.

That pang of… something.

Again.

He needed sleep, proper sleep. He just could bring himself to try. He could do without the nightmares.

He could hear giggling, and turned to find it. There was a woman - sort of - chatting up a genderless gelatinous mass. Some sights you never got used to.

The woman was quite clearly a harlot. _Harlot? What, was he still in the 1900s?_

He sighed and turned back to his drink.

Jack had considered whoring, at first. Back when he had just re-emerged in the stars, full of vain hope that all his problems would be instantly forgotten. He'd convinced himself that he wanted it, another body to lose himself in.

He'd gone as far as being pressed between a wall and the purple skin of a fellow drunkard before he'd backed out. He couldn't go through with it.

Memories weren't so easy to leave behind as people were.

Planets were, though, and he decided it was time to move on.

He found himself the first ship to Anywhere-but-here, and paid in cash.

000

_Not a girl anymore._

_She was a grown woman, in the same dress._

_Scruffier, dirtier._

Sexier.

_He blinked, out of pure shock, and when he looked she'd changed again._

_She was shorter, younger and blonde with big kissable lips and a Union Jack T-shirt._

_Blink._

_A man in a dirty red jacket with too many buttons and the sad, distant look in his eyes, the look of someone desperately and hopelessly in childish love - the kind of love that's only expressed through sex and violence._

_Blink._

_A woman in her twenties, all dolled up in her jet setting 1920s outfit, loose and cool cotton and a huge hat to maintain her pale British complexion even in the hot, beating sun of an exotic country._

_Blink._

_A pretty, fair man at the end of the world. Blink. A woman, Lynda, with a 'y'. Blink. A handsome soldier, all made up in his World War II uniform. Blink. A hopeful young lady, full of belief in the unbelievable. Blink. A writer, in Berlin, chasing boys and evading bombs. Blink. A gorgeous Italian woman in Wales. Blink. A man, irradiated and chased across time, seen only twice; once in 1967 and again in 2008, but with a reversed temporal role for them both - somebody's past and somebody's future. Blink. A woman, young a pretty and drowned. Blink. Her husband, guilty and ashamed, hands covered in blood._

_Blink._

_And then it was a man. A man in a leather jacket and a cashmere jumper, armed with only a screwdriver and sheer gall. A man with an unremarkable face, but ears like a Nostravarian Elephant. A man with eyes so much older than they should be, the most beautiful eyes, hardened by time and experience._

_Then the man changed, even without a blink. He's taller, thinner, with more hair and more teeth. He wears suits now, and a childish, excitable grin. The gall is still there, as is the screwdriver, accompanied now with enough techno-babble to fell a Cyberman. His eyes are bigger, brown and puppy-dog and sad, but still the same intensity and experience._

_The man doesn't move, or say anything. Just stands, and stares accusingly._

_He stared back, all concept of time fleeing him. It could have been hours, or months. In the silence. And the gloom. Staring._

_Then, though the mouth doesn't move, the unmistakable voice of the man in the suit._

_' You're wrong.'_

000

New planet.

Not that different.

Jack found himself another bar, more alcohol that didn't really help anything in any way, and started knocking it back like water.

He deliberately didn't think about the fact that he was still hovering in the mid-regions of the Milky Way. Not actually any further that Earth rockets could take you. It was, of course, entirely coincidental, after alll.

He found a comfy spot, and tried very hard not to think about anything beyond his next measure of pseudo-whiskey.

This proved to be immensely difficult when his useless leather wrist watch started beeping.

He valiantly managed to ignore it for the whole of two drinks. Then his curiosity got the better of him. Perhaps John had reconsidered his… offer sounded better than demand.

It wasn't.

It wasn't even a video.

Just numbers. Co-ordinates.

No message at all, no sender ID.

He grunted into his glass, and ignored it.

000

_' You're wrong, Jack.'_

_The way he said that name. Elongating the vowel and adding a sharp finality to the K. It wasn't his real name, but when it was said like that he wanted it to be. Desperately._

_' Jack. Wrong, Jack.'_

_' Jack?'_

_A different voice, gorgeous rounded vowels._

_A three piece suit, silk tie._

_' You'll forget. A thousand years, you won't remember me.'_

_Then another, smaller voice._

_' Why, Uncle Jack? Why me?'_

_He couldn't speak, could make a sound. He was choking._

_No, he was literally choking, mouth full of dirt, the heavy wetness of soil pressing down on his chest, wriggly creatures moving against his skin._

_And the darkness again._

_He screamed, but it made no noise._

_He didn't know what to do._

_So he screamed again._

000

Hypnic jerk.

Guilt.

' You alright there, love?' a busty barmaid asked, leaning over Jack . ' Look like you've seena ghost.'

' Yeah,' he said, trying not to make it sound like _They're everywhere_.

' Another drink, ease your sorrows?'

He almost said yes, then stopped himself.

If he fell asleep on another bar his head might explode. He needed to do something, distract himself. His eyes caught a glint of leather.

' No,' he said, pushing himself up and off the table.

He checked the numbers again, punched the co-ordinates into his manipulator. It might not work, but it could still give him a location.

He considered his choice.

Stay here and drink himself to death by nasty whiskey, suffering nightmare after nightmare and unable to find any peace anywhere, or take a risk, walk into a trap and be killed by a very innovative assassin.

' Fuck it,' he muttered, and pressed enter.

**Quick warning; I am a Briton and, thus, can't watch Miracle Day for another harrowing six days. So, please, if you review, keep it series four spoiler free. Thanks. Along the same vein, this story is canonical up to the end of series three, so sorry if Miracle Day spoils that.**

**I've had this story as a WIP for months, and never posted it. I figure I probably should now, while series four is looming.**

**And, in case anyone was wondering who the people in the dream were, here they are, in appearing order;**

**Rose, as in **_**The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances; **_**John Hart, as of **_**Kiss Kiss Bang Bang;**_** Eleanor, Duchess of Melrose, from the Radio Play **_**Golden Age**_**; The refugee Jack flirts with in **_**Utopia**_**; Lynda from **_**Bad Wolf/The Parting of The ways**_**; Algie, Jack's soldier "friend" from **_**The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances**_**; Estelle, from **_**Small Worlds**_**; Christopher Isherwood, as mentioned in **_**A Day in the Death**_**; Lucia Moretti, Alice's mother, as mentioned in **_**Children of Earth**_**; Michael Bellini, from the Torchwood Novel **_**Trace Memory**_**; And then Miles and his unfortunate wife from the Torchwood Novel **_**The House that Jack Built**_**.**

**This is my first Torchwood fic, so reviews are appreciated. Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two; An Arrival**

Jack disembarked the cargo ship somewhat tentatively.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd walked blindly into a trap, but he'd prefer to avoid it if he could. Especially where anonymous messages were concerned.

' I don't know about you,' a voice next to him said, gruffly. ' But I'll be out of here as soon as possible.'

It was a Judoon. A rogue Judoon, apparently. Jack had never seen one outside of the Shadow Proclamation before. Call it striking gap in his knowledge, but he wasn't sure they were allowed outside of the Shadow Proclamation.

Jack didn't make a habit of making chit-chat anymore. It wasn't worth it, in the end, better to keep himself to himself. But, the crew had been made up of three tiny blue creatures, bulbous and disproportionate and unable to speak a word of any single one Earth language, and a fairly simple autopilot system. And Jack couldn't very well pass up the company of the only English speaking creature on the ship. Besides, how could anyone say no to a conversation with a giant, talking, leather-clad rhino, even if said rhino seemed to have adopted a bizarre Lancashire accent?

There was chit-chat, and there was _chit-chat_.

' Depends who I run into, I guess,' Jack said, lightly. ' I'll be significantly longer if someone decides to blow my brains on the lino.'

The Judoon made a strange choked sound that Jack recognised as a laugh.

' Hope you find what you're looking for, Jacky-boy,' the Judoon bared it's teeth in some sort of smile, then headed off into the crowd.

Jack straightened his collar, took a breath, then entered the thrall himself.

000

There was a very cool look to the place, but he didn't feel cold.

It was very metallic. All silver and chrome and glass. Also, a lot of whitewash walls. It was almost clinical, sterile.

It was also full of people. More people than he thought there should have been in your average space-port. There were twelve ships of varying sizes in dock at that the moment. Some of them, like the one he had just vacated, were cargo and freight carrying ships. Most were huge passenger liners.

Where ever he was, it was commercial.

It had taken the whole of twenty minutes to find a ship heading in the direction of the co-ordinates supplied. Two more to secure passage, with a hard look and a flash of intergalactic credits. A four hour flight - he shouldn't still be on Earth GMT, but he was - and he was stepping out into the shiny new world.

Only, now that he was there, he wasn't sure what to do.

After a wander across the port, through the crowd, he found himself stepping into a huge atrium. It was just as sterile, more white tiles reminiscent of the autopsy room back in the Hub… Before it had been blown apart.

He sighed. He needed a drink.

In the middle of the massive dome of a room was a massive arc of a table. Above it a sign read in bold, silver letters _The Help Desk_, and underneath, smaller, _Do not hesitate to ask for assistance_. The desk was manned by three humanoids - two women and a plump old man with a shock of white hair and a little tuft of a goatee to match - who all looked bored. The desk was completely deserted as the patrons breezed around it and headed to the doorway at the other side of the room.

Jack noticed the wall above the arched door, which led into a darker room he couldn't see into, was also emblazoned with giant silver letters.

' Welcome to Arcadia?'

' Aye,' the man at the desk said, proudly. ' Arcadia III, actually. Second largest moon orbiting the planet Ferna. The Biggest one is the spa complex, shuttles out every hour, on the hour.'

' So, why are we on the moon? If there's a planet down there, couldn't they have put the spa and the… Whatever-this-is together?'

The man smiled, beamed in fact, like he hadn't been asked a question in all his years of service, and turned Jack around by the shoulders to face the huge glass panel window on the opposite side of the atrium.

Below them shone a sun. Smaller than the Earth's by a good 80%, but a deeper shade of orange than Jack had ever seen before. It looked like a huge, flaming Satsuma a little past it's best-before-date.

' That,' the man indicated the glowing fruit, ' would be Ferna. Not the most pleasant of places to be. Much safer up here, y'know, where we won't burn to death.'

' It's over 8,000 degrees down there,' the thinnest of the women put in, not looking up from her nails. ' Be more of an evaporation than a burning, I should think.'

' Cheery as ever, Garnet,' the man dismissed her, entirely unperturbed by the interruption. ' Makes an excellent power source, though. All that heat. Perfect for this place.'

' And that would be…?'

' Go look for yourself,' the man said, giving Jack an encouraging shove towards the main archway, and the darkened room.

000

The dark was actually nothing more than an arched corridor; long and straight and mood lit, like an airport at night. There was a distinct light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, though. Colourful light.

When Jack stepped out into it, he actually laughed. It sounded alien to his own ears, and he forced himself to stop.

It was still a little funny though.

_Arcadia_.

The space was full of the colourful kaleidoscope of blinking light from eighties pinball machines; the endless beeping and occasional _ching_ of coins clattering together as they fell from the bandits, the slot machines.

The whole planet was literally an arcade. Ah, puns. Clever aliens.

The room was darkened, probably to enhance the thrall of the pretty bright lights for the punters and their rattling pockets. Jack just found it slightly annoying. Red flashed in the peripheral vision of his left eye, and blue sparkled off to the right. He felt like he was wearing those old nineties attempts at 3D glasses, all cardboard and cling film.

That back of the room seemed brighter, so he head for it. It was partitioned off from the arcade proper by a few wide arches.

Stepping through them was like walking into a museum.

Even though there weren't any discernable barriers, the incessant clicking and beeping was suddenly muted, as was the flashing. The arches were decorative and white, the floor something akin to marble.

The back wall was covered in floor-to-ceiling cabinets, all futuristic in sleek chrome and glass, and displaying various gaming consoles from the history of the Milky Way.

An X-box stared out at him, all black and blocky, with a little plaque that labelled it with the co-ordinates of Earth and a timestamp. He wasn't sure why anyone would care.

Jack noticed a door at the far end of the hall, separated by a velvet curtain. He made his way towards it, pretending to be interested in following the artefacts in the cases.

A Martian piece popped out at him, distinctive with it's clay colour and pseudo-crude design. Jack didn't know what it was, or what it did, but he would hazard a guess that the circuitry it concealed was more complex than that in his vortex manipulator.

He took a few more paces down the display and spotted a Gameboy. The original one; brick sized and slate grey, with a flat colourless screen a bare two inches and ribs all up the back for no discernable reason. Jack smiled, the tale of that summer he'd spent in Japan with Fusajiro Yamauchi and his assistant back in 1990, when they'd still been struggling with handmade cards and niche markets, on the tip of his tongue.

Then he remembered he didn't have anybody to tell, and the smile dissolved into something altogether more painful. He wondered if that was how The Doctor felt, when they left him alone with only his anecdotes and the TARDIS.

Maybe, he thought, it was all either of them deserved.

000

Arcadia III, the second largest moon of Ferna, was huge.

Jack followed the Museum Hall, which led to a second one, completely whitewashed and bare, but for a single metal sculpture of a lizard in a tuxedo. This one gave way to third hallway, which seemed to no purpose but to house stray visitors. Jack bypassed several slightly confused looking people, to yet another curtain.

This one brought him to a junction, a crossroads. Straight across, he decided, and strode across the room.

' Please, you've got to help me,' a woman was saying as he passed.

He glanced back and saw she was pleading to a man in uniform. Similar uniform to the people at reception. Staff. The woman was distinctly less well groomed, a dowdy and harassed figure.

' Come this way, madam, and tell me again.'

' He's just gone,' she babbled, stepping aside slightly. ' I left him for two minutes, while I went to the bar, and he was gone. He would - He couldn't have - He shouldn't be just _gone_!'

She was slurring slightly, and Jack silently commended the patience of the usher dealing so calmly with her. Handling lost, hysterical drunks must be in the job description.

Jack passed into another decorative hall. Through to another sculpture room - this time a purple clay dragon - and into a second darkened room. This one didn't flash quite so much.

Instead, it was filled with curtained sections. Jack's initial impression was of a hospital. Or a brothel. Difficult to tell them apart, some of the places he'd been.

As he passed through, he spotted the consoles lying in the cordoned segments. One contained a series of Apple Macs, three or four screens hooked up together like the workstations at the Hub, and loading the login screen for Another Life. Owen had loved that game, once. Then he met up with an ex through it, introduced her to the world of Torchwood and got her body shelled out and overtaken by a dying alien's consciousness before sending her corpse through the rift in an exploding submarine. He'd lost interest after that.

Two corridors and a Call Of Duty hall later, Jack found himself in a sort of art gallery. Or, poster gallery. It was the longest hall yet, and was plastered with the adverts for hundred of games.

Some where original; he recognised them from storefronts in Cardiff - _Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Fight the Civil War; Who's side are you on?_Some must be remade version purely for the arcade/museum/gallery/moon/maze, because they acknowledged the wider universe - _Tales of Vesperia; Rarest Games on Seven Planets, Across Three Galaxies! _And the odd one or two were completely alien. Written in languages he couldn't read, and didn't try to, one of which was a huge black and white image of matrix patterns similar to Earth binary code.

By the time Jack had been through what was labelled as the Final Fantasy room, and ducked around a very unhappy looking man dressed as a giant bear with a pompom dangling in his face, who was resignedly trailing after a woman in a cactus suit, he was feeling thoroughly taxed.

' Can I help you, sir?'

Jack turned to see the steward he'd seen being harassed earlier; the hysterical woman nowhere in sight. When Jack didn't answer, the man went on.

' You seem a little lost, Sir. Might I help?'

Jack could help but feel a bit patronised, and turned away with a clipped, ' No.'

' As you wish, Sir. It's just that you've walked across this hall three times now, Sir.'

And, Jack realised, he had. It was like a maze, and Jack had been in some fairly big, fairly unpleasant mazes that involved moving rooms, traps and hunters. He didn't like the feeling.

' I…' he hesitated, then put on his Captain voice. ' I'm looking for someone.'

' Yes, Sir.'

Jack swallowed, and tried very hard to ignore the butler-esque stature of the man.

' Is that all, Sir?'

It occurred to Jack that he probably sounded ridiculous, asking for help finding a person he had no description of. But then, it was a bit ridiculous. And, yet, he'd still done stupider things. He nodded.

' Have you tried the bar, sir?'

' Bar?'

' Bar,' the man confirmed gravely. ' You'll find it just through here, sir.'

He gestured to a heavy velvet curtain that Jack could have sworn wasn't there before.

' Thanks.'

The bar itself was possibly the most relaxing place on the whole moon. The light was ambient, as was the gentle music in the background. There were people flittering about calmly, not like the chaotic crush of the games rooms.

Jack almost started to relax, then he spotted her.

000

_He is twelve, and terrified._

_It had seemed like such a good idea that morning, when he told his mother he was going to play knowing full well he wouldn't be back again. Ever._

_Now it is dark, and he is exhausted from the full days walk from the beaches of his home to the city in the centre of the mainland. He's hungry, too, because it would have been suspicious to snatch more than just a roll of bread for his lunch, and he was just so desperate to get away._

_He couldn't take it any more, all the looks they gave him. Everybody had lost somebody to the creatures, but they all looked at him with that accusing look. He'd lost his little brother. And his mother, God, his mother. She knew most of all, and she hated him for it, he knew. She never said so, but he could see it in her dead eyes._

_He is in an alley. He thinks it is an alley. He's never been to the city alone before, hasn't been at all since his father was killed. It's meant to be safer, here. Surrounded by the buildings, and the military and the government. It's meant to be so much better when there are so many people around. _

_Instead he feels like a rat. The city folk scurry past in huddled groups, never stopping. The buildings loom over him, making him feel ever so small and insignificant. It should be warmer, he thinks, with all the people, but it isn't. It's cold and distant and lonely._

_He wants to be brave, wants to be strong, like his dad, but he isn't. He starts to cry._

' _Hey, you! Shut up.'_

_He jumps, frightened, but it's only a girl. She's a little smaller than him, and very dirty. She has dark, matted hair and is wearing a dress that was probably pretty once, but is now just torn and coated in filth. _

_She looks bossily at him and puts a finger to her lips._

' _Shhh! If they hear you, they'll let the feral out.'_

' _Feral?' he manages to ask, wiping his face._

' _Yeah. Feral. Monsters. They say they were kids once, caught by the creatures and tortured to death. If they bite you, you'll turn into one of 'em.'_

_He wants to ask how they can bite anybody if they were already tortured to death, but she shushes him again, and pulls him into an upturned metal box. It smells of grime and rot._

' _Where you from, then?'_

' _Boeshane,' he tells her, huddling his knees to his chest._

' _Beach boy, then. Here,' she considers for a moment longer, tosses him a blanket, then hands him a chunk of bread. ' I'm Nemanja.'_

_He doesn't answer, because he's already got a mouthful of slightly sour tasting crumbs, but he notices she's shivering. He shuffles closer to her, and wraps the thin cloth around them both._

_They don't say another word, and when he wakes in the morning she's gone and taken the blanket with her._

_He treks straight back home, running half the way, and making it back just in time to get the scolding of his life over his warm, sweet fish casserole supper. He doesn't go back to the city for five years._

000

Jack blinked. She smirked across the room at him.

She's a little older than the last time he saw her, back on their mission to Atlantis. She still looked younger than him, though. She was wearing a long, flowing green dress, very sophisticated, and her hair was longer, loose; dyed red at the tips and blonde at the roots and mixed in the middle into almost every conceivable shade of orange, ginger and auburn.

It was so divorced from the dark-haired dolly-dressed girl he remembered he almost couldn't reconcile them in his mind, but for that singularly impressive eyebrow raise that made him feel a pang of the strange mix of pride, amusement, exasperation, affection and giddiness only two people had ever triggered in him.

She smirked at him, and he realised he was staring. Whatever he had been imagining, it hadn't been this.

Just to be certain he wasn't imagining things again, Jack blinked a few times.

As he watched the smirking, living memory nudge a second chair out from under the table with her toes, he absently wondered how she had known which entrance he would use.

' You never could resist a velvet curtain,' she answered, as if reading his mind. He absently checked her throat for heavy, engraved pendants. ' Plus, that way leads to the balcony. I know you've always been a bit dramatic, but never one for clambering through windows.'

He didn't answer her, either, but took the seat offered. There was already a glass for him, full of the distinctive clear calm of pure hyper vodka. He ignored it.

' Was that a Judoon I saw you with? On the docks?' She clarified, unnecessarily.

He might've know she'd be watching for him.

' Might've been,' was his only answer.

' Might've known you'd be into leather. Never could get past the horn, myself.' She thought for a minute, downed her drink. ' You speak in tongues, then?'

' He spoke mine.'

' Ah,' she snatched his untouched glass and downed that, too. ' Didn't think you'd have the patience for that. All those syllables. So guttural. Such hard work, and it all sounds the same anyway.'

Jack nearly laughed at the notion that he was impatient, that he didn't have the time to learn a new language if he so desired. Except that he didn't. The only thing he desired were answers.

' What do you want, Nemanja?'

' Oh,' she said, an air of surprise and offence all at once. He knew it was fake, but it was convincing. ' We're on proper names now, are we -'

' Jack,' he said, firmly, going for a tone that broke no argument. She didn't continue, so he considered it a success. ' Now, what do you want?'

' Riches,' she answered, quickly and easily. ' Love. Universal piece. No, wait. That'd be boring.' She grinned, raised her hands like she was holding up an invisible cocktail mixer, and shook it. ' What's the point in life if there isn't a bit of conflict to shake it up a bit.'

Jack felt his hands close convulsively, his jaw twitch, a reminder of the last time he had had his life _shaken up a bit_.

' What. Do. You. Want?' he asked again, slower, more dangerously, enunciating each word. Then he added, so there wasn't any more avoidance, ' With me?'

She looked him over once, appraisingly, then dropped her eyes to the table.

' Help.'

**God, this chapter was fun to write. It essentially me proving how much of a geek I truly am. See if you can collect all the nerdy references and you'll win an imaginary prize! Ahem… Yeah.**

**I feel the need to point out that this isn't a romance story. No Jack/OFC. Just to be clear. I think that's all, really. **

**Thanks for reading! This is still my first Torchwood fic, and reviews are greatly appreciated. Ta!**


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